Chapter 1: The Dream That Burns
* Istanbul, 2147 AD *
The dream came like a virus, jagged and relentless, tearing through Reyan Al-Mehdi's mind. He stood in a city older than time—Eridu, its ziggurats pulsing with molten code, the sky a black canvas bleeding binary stars. A figure loomed before him, crowned in fire, its voice a low-frequency hum that cracked his bones: *"I am Ilum-Ra, the glitch that burns. Break the Veil, or be its slave."* The figure's chest glowed with glyphs—spirals, jagged lines, a language no human should know. Reyan reached out, his hand trembling, and the world burned red.
He woke gasping, his neural implant sparking static in his left eye. The safehouse in Istanbul's undercity was a concrete coffin, its walls scrawled with anti-Union graffiti: *The Net Lies*. Sweat soaked his threadbare shirt, and his chest throbbed like a hacked server. He stumbled to a cracked mirror, pulling his collar aside. There they were—glyphs, faint but glowing, etched into his skin like the ones in his dream. Not scars from Mosul, where he'd watched his UN squad burn in a drone strike. Something else. Something *wrong*.
"Get it together," he muttered, his voice rough from disuse. At thirty-four, Reyan was a ghost—ex-UN hacker, burned out after a decade of neural warfare, now dodging Union thought-scans in Istanbul's slums. His PTSD was a constant hum, like a bad signal, spiking with memories of fire and screams. But these dreams were new, starting a month ago, each one louder, each one carving deeper into his mind.
His implant buzzed, a Union alert flashing across his vision: *Anomaly detected, Göbekli Tepe sector. Citizens, report code breaches.* Reyan swiped it away, his fingers twitching. Göbekli Tepe. The name tugged at him, like a buried file. Two nights ago, drunk on black-market synth-liquor, he'd hacked a digital archaeologist's server on a whim, pulling data on the site's 2145 pulse—an unexplained signal that fried global neural webs for three seconds. Among the files was a scan of a stone shard, etched with glyphs matching his chest. He'd thought it was a glitch, a PTSD-fueled delusion. Now he wasn't sure.
He grabbed his rig—a cobbled-together quantum deck with scavenged qubits—and jacked into the neural web. Istanbul's undercity hummed in his mind, a neon labyrinth of encrypted nodes and black-market streams. He navigated to a dark pool, a hacker haven run by the House of Enki, rogue archivists who hoarded pre-Veil data. His alias, *Sleeper*, flickered as he pinged his contact, a coder named Kael.
"Got something weird," Reyan typed, uploading a photo of his chest glyphs. "Matches a Göbekli shard. Any hits?"
Kael's response was instant: "Don't move. Those are *Codex* glyphs—Veiled Flame shit. Cult's been sniffing for them. You're hot."
Reyan's pulse spiked. The Cult of Ilum-Ra—zealots who believed a forgotten god's code could reboot humanity. He'd dismissed them as neural-web myths, like the Keepers or Anunaki ghosts. But Kael wasn't one for hype. Reyan's implant glitched again, overlaying his vision with a fragment of his dream: *Break the Veil.* He yanked the plug, heart hammering.
A low hum filled the safehouse. Reyan froze, his soldier's instincts kicking in. He grabbed a pulse-knife from under his cot and crept to the window, peeling back a tattered curtain. Outside, Istanbul's undercity sprawled—a maze of drone-lit alleys and neural billboards preaching Union dogma: *Faith is Code, Code is Order.* But the hum wasn't street noise. It came from above.
A Cult AI drone hovered, its optic pulsing red, scanning the building. Reyan ducked, his chest glyphs flaring hot. "Shit," he hissed, grabbing his rig and a backpack. He'd stolen the Göbekli shard's data, not the stone itself, but the Cult didn't care about details. If they tied him to the glyphs, he was dead—or worse, a lab rat.
He bolted for the door, but his implant sparked, flooding his mind with the dream's voice: *You are the Archive, the Living Code.* Reyan stumbled, clutching his skull. The glyphs burned brighter, and for a second, he saw Eridu again—its ziggurats not stone but neural nodes, pulsing with Ilum-Ra's rebellion. He wasn't just dreaming. He was *remembering*.
The safehouse door hissed open, a Union thought-scan drone whirring inside. Its optic locked on him, a synthetic voice droning: "Citizen, submit to neural audit. Anomalous code detected." Reyan's PTSD surged—Mosul's drones, their lasers cutting through his squad. He lunged, slashing the pulse-knife through its core. Sparks flew, and the drone crashed, but its signal would've pinged the Keepers, the Union's shadow enforcers.
Reyan sprinted into the undercity, alleys blurring past—vendors hawking neural mods, kids jacked into VR prayers. His implant glitched, overlaying a map: the Basilica Cistern, a pre-Veil ruin buried under Istanbul. The dream's voice urged him there, like a coded command. He hated it—hated being a pawn in some ancient script—but running was his only play.
He ducked into a black-market node, a dive bar pulsing with neural beats. Holo-screens flashed Union propaganda: *The Veil Protects. Faith Unites.* Reyan scoffed. Religions were just firewalls, keeping humanity docile while the Union mined their minds. But the glyphs, the dreams—they were something older, something the Veil couldn't erase.
His implant pinged—a dark pool message from Kael: "Cistern's a data vault. Cult thinks it's Ilum-Ra's first node. Get out of Istanbul, Sleeper. You're carrying *his* code." Attached was a *Codex* fragment: *"When the stars crash, the Flame-Twins awaken, their blood the key to the red hour."*
Reyan's chest tightened. Flame-Twins. Red hour. Gibberish, but it hit like a memory. He glanced at his reflection in a holo-screen, the glyphs faintly glowing. His PTSD whispered: *You're broken, not chosen.* But the dream's voice roared louder: *You are the glitch that burns.*
A shadow moved in the bar's corner—a woman, her diplomat's neural halo glinting. Her eyes locked on him, sharp as a blade, her voice a low hum that coiled in his mind: "Reyan Al-Mehdi. You're late, Sleeper." She stepped closer, elegance masking menace. Selika Maris Delgado, Union envoy, but her presence felt coded, like she knew his glyphs.
The bar's holo-screens glitched, showing a red sky over Göbekli Tepe. The undercity trembled, neural webs flickering. Reyan's glyphs burned, and the dream's voice surged: *The Veil cracks. Find her. Break it.*
He gripped his pulse-knife, torn between running and facing her. The stars were crashing, and his code was waking.